


towards better things

by evanescent



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Disabled Character, Gen, a little less of canon-typical horror and a little more than canon-typical softness, melanie and jon are cane users solidarity, nebulous s5 timeframe, they're friends but they're being difficult about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23097667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanescent/pseuds/evanescent
Summary: “It’s just — I’d have kind of expected...”“That given the opportunity I will tear into you no questions asked, the way Georgie has when we first met up?” she asks, deadpan.“I — well —” he flounders. “Youdidask Martin if he was holding my hand because you wanted to push me into that sizzling pool filled with definitely-not-water the other day.”“Because you were being annoying,” she just says....Melanie and Jon have a bonding moment of sorts, apocalypse-related circumstances notwithstanding.
Relationships: Melanie King & Jonathan Sims, background what the girlfriends and jonmartin
Comments: 26
Kudos: 152





	towards better things

**Author's Note:**

> lowkey highkey thought i will never write anything again after finishing my thesis, but i got into this podcast in january and haven't known peace since then and here we are. hope you will forgive me for being rusty (pun intended)
> 
> there's like no factual plot in this because i'm not that smart and feel like 80% of my s5 predictions will get jossed anyway, so. tma character dynamics am i right

It happens in a matter of seconds, really. They stopped a short while ago and Martin is trying to catch the signal on their single still working phone while Georgie and Jon are in the middle of convincing the Admiral to go back into his designed scarf carrier. From where she’s sitting on a rock, Melanie gets a kick out of listening to them try and fail, wondering if she should help out, when suddenly something in the landscape audibly _shifts_.

“Shit!” she curses, grabbing her cane and sprinting to her feet. They’ve been lucky today, managing to get pretty far without trouble, so of course it wouldn’t last. The ripple — of the earth? the sky? she can’t tell — that follows almost drowns out Georgie’s voice as she calls her name. Almost.

“Georgie!” Melanie shouts back, stumbling as she tries to keep her balance. She kneels, bracing herself with the cane, waiting for the aftershocks. They don’t come, yet she doesn’t dare to move from her spot. She can’t be sure some kind of chasm hasn’t opened just a feet or two away from her, can’t be sure there’s still a solid ground to speak of. Instead, she tries again, “Georgie? Jon? Martin? Anyone?”

Her voice sounds pathetic to her own ears. It takes a moment to get her breathing under control, the iron grip around her rib cage loosening somewhat. She just hopes it isn’t the Buried; Melanie doesn’t do well with being trapped even after everything. Especially after everything.

Then, she hears something and snaps her head up. “Admiral?” she calls and receives another meow in response. It doesn’t sound far. “Hey, come here, follow my voice, okay?” she holds out her hand, noting she doesn’t meet any kind of resistance in the air. “Come on, Admiral,” she pleads until she feels something soft and damp push against her palm. Melanie heaves a sigh of relief as she gathers the cat into her arms, pressing her face into the fur. It’s a testament to how messed up the situation is that the Admiral doesn’t even struggle against being manhandled like that. “Oh, thank God, I don’t know what Georgie would have done if something happened to you,” she tries to joke, despite the anxiety at not knowing if something happened to Georgie herself crawling up her spine.

“Melanie?” a rough voice calls. By all accounts, it sounds like Jon, but that doesn’t mean anything and Melanie’s hand goes to a baseball bat she has strapped across her back. Only when the Admiral starts to purr loudly, vibrating against her chest, she’s sure it’s really him and responds, “Yeah. Where are you?”

Jon doesn’t say anything, but after a moment she feels a hand on her shoulder and he seems to sit down next to her, if the creaking of his joints is anything to go by. The Admiral wriggles out of her arms and drapes himself partially over her lap, partially over Jon’s, she supposes.

“Where —” she starts, only to be shushed by Jon. Once, that would have come off as patronizing and irritate the hell out of Melanie, but now she just sits there and listens, straining her ears to hear either a sign of Georgie and Martin or danger approaching.

Instead, there’s only their respective labored breathing and the Admiral’s soft panting. Nothing to indicate they’re still outside — then again, nothing suggests they’re anywhere at all.

Jon still doesn’t say anything, which is not strange. He doesn’t talk much these days, opting for written notes and makeshift sign language. He makes exceptions most often for Martin, for obvious reasons, and Melanie, also for obvious reasons. The two of them have been making use of a tap code as well and that’s what she restores to now, nudging Jon to get his attention before she grabs her cane and taps out her question against the ground.

_What is it?_

Jon’s answer is quick and comes with his own cane’s light tapping. _Dark. Maybe Vast._

Melanie lets out a breath she didn’t realize she’s been holding. It doesn’t make much difference to her, but she knows the Dark is a tricky one, even for Jon. Or it used to be; it doesn’t seem to matter all that much at this point.

 _Safe to speak?_ she asks.

Jon doesn’t tap back, but she can feel him make the so-so gesture in the air between them. Melanie decides to take her chances. “What about Georgie and Martin?”

“They’re not in this… space,” he replies, tired and strained. “So maybe they’re still outside. They should be fine.”

He doesn’t sound particularly convincing and so Melanie’s voice has a tinge of bitterness in it as she prods, “You think or you _know_?”

The Admiral yowls, his tail lightly smacking Melanie in the chest. Jon squeezes her hand, which is more grounding than she’d like to admit, and says quietly, “They will be fine.” She realizes he’s trying to reassure her just as much as himself and the fight drains out of her. It’s exhausting in its own way, but it’s better than bursting with anger all the time. She tries not to fall back into her old ways, she _doesn’t want_ to. It’s a continuous process, though. Takes an effort.

In some ways, it feels like all they’ve been doing recently is _trying_. It’s not a bad thing; she just wishes the circumstances were different.

At least the Admiral is back to purring, she notices.

“Are you scratching him under the chin?” Melanie inquires, finely tuned to most, if not all, of Admiral’s particular kinds of purrs, meows and hisses at this point.

Jon taps the back of her hand with his index finger once. Melanie’s other hand goes to the cat’s back and she starts petting him. It’s calming for all of them, she supposes.

“Is there… something else here with us?” she asks. Her voice doesn’t echo at all, as if the sounds were immediately getting swallowed by the space around them. This time, Jon taps twice. Hm. “...you can see, right?”

Jon gives a short, humourless laugh. “I can _always_ see now, Melanie.”

“Fair enough,” she mutters. She almost asks — but thinks better of it. She doesn’t feel any kind of draft or moisture and the ground isn’t grass or soil or anything, really. If they’re actually suspended in the nothingness amidst darkness, she doesn’t _want_ to know. “So… what should we do?”

This time, Jon spells out the answer against her hand. _Wait_.

She sighs, dissatisfied. Melanie knows it’s the soundest outcome — if there isn’t anyone or anything going out of their way to attack them, the landscape will probably be altered soon enough by another power that seeks out to mold it to its liking. She just hopes they won’t end up out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Still, her skin itches. It reminds Melanie of the first days after she quit the Institute and the way she had to have her hands occupied at all times when she wasn’t sleeping, so she wouldn’t touch and mess with her bandages. It’s _almost_ like that now, as the Admiral has often been part of that equation. Jon hasn’t, but nevertheless, she doesn't withdraw her hand.

 _Okay?_ Jon asks. Melanie scoffs lightly, so he adds hastily, "All things considered, of course."

"Fine,” she replies, a little cranky. “Although admittedly, I’d feel better if we had some knife here, just to be sure. Does _your_ cane have a little hidden knife at the base of it? I haven’t asked before.” Melanie would have definitely got that little trick in her own, but she isn’t really the one for blades anymore.

Jon makes a noise that sounds a lot like an aborted laugh. “No knives, probably for the best.” _Probably_ , she agrees half-heartedly. “Still, are you sure —”

“Don’t skirt around, Jon,” she interrupts him, now irritated. “Just say what’s on your mind.”

“Well, I just thought — being stuck here, particularly with me — it’d be difficult for you,” he explains, haltingly.

“The Dark hasn’t really done much for me before and it definitely doesn’t now,” she says, shrugging. “And as for you, well — not seeing your ugly mug makes things easier.” Melanie is joking, mostly. It’s more complicated than that; being Seen will always sit uneasy with her. She gives credit where it’s due, though — Jon got better at respecting privacy and not compelling by accident. Admittedly that’s because his attention nowadays is… splintered to the point of Martin having to remind him to refocus on here and now.

“I can imagine,” Jon says dryly. “It’s just — I’d have kind of expected...”

“That given the opportunity I will tear into you no questions asked, the way Georgie has when we first met up?” she asks, deadpan.

“I — well —” he flounders. “You _did_ ask Martin if he was holding my hand because you wanted to push me into that sizzling pool filled with definitely-not-water the other day.”

“Because you were being annoying,” she just says. “But I also _did_ mean what I said when you came over that time,” she adds, trying to get her point across. It’s still hard to put some of her thoughts about this whole mess in words, but she owes it to both of them to make an attempt. “Things were different when it was the matter of getting out of the Institute or staying. It’s all,” she makes a vague gesture with her hand, “out in the open now and I can’t escape it. What I can do, though, is help to get rid of it. Not because that’s what someone or something expects of me, but because I want to go back to ninety-nine percent of the world being _normal_ awful instead of _eldritch nightmare_ awful.” She squares her shoulders involuntarily. “I went through too much to have it taken away from me. When this is over, I will be back to learning Braille, going to therapy and expanding Georgie’s, frankly atrocious, collection of tacky slippers to involve _fluffy_ tacky slippers.”

“To be fair, she really has a thing for the slippers,” Jon agrees, faintly amused. He inhales slowly. “We will fix this, Melanie. You earned it.”

“I think we _all_ earned it,” she states, humourless. Jon’s answering silence is a palpable, prickly thing. She sighs in frustration. “I really can’t stand when you — we’ve been over this. You’re not coddling me and I’m not coddling you.”

“I wouldn’t want you to. You were right, after all,” he says, voice terribly level. “About — most of it. All of it, even.” Melanie knows what he means. The manipulation, the plan behind a plan, the cycle of fear.

“And what, you think being right makes me _happy_? That I could pull an, _I told you so_?” She shakes her head, her fist sinking into Admiral’s fur. “What good there is in being right about the obvious when you unwittingly played your part in it anyway?” she asks sourly. One way or the other, she _will_ have her go at Jonah. “You can stew in your guilt, but no one actually wants your martyrdoom, Jon.”

There’s a beat of silence and then Melanie hears a telltale _click_ , and she knows what’s coming even before she hears her own voice spilling from Jon’s mouth, “ _I hope you win, but I also hope it hurts_.” She thinks both of them must wince and then Jon is abruptly snapping his jaw shut, stammering out, “I, I —”

“ _Don’t_ apologize. Keep a lid on these,” she reminds him, clipped, but not unkind. The frequency of Jon more-or-less accidentally speaking through recorded statements is increasing, she notes distantly. She will have to tell the others. “I remember the things I said. And now I’m telling you that if you’re doing this because you feel you have to, because no one else will, because you don’t expect to come out of it alive — well, that’s stupid. For every puppet _they_ string there apparently will be a misguided, well-meaning idiot who resists.” She squeezes his hand tightly. “Be selfish about this. Undo the end of the world because you _can_. Because _you_ want to.”

Jon sounds feeble when he reminds, “We’re still figuring out the ‘undoing’ part, I hope you realize.”

"Ugh! Do you have to be so _difficult_?" Melanie complains, having finally run out of patience. Jon, to her surprise, snorts softly.

"Speak for yourself," he just mumbles.

"And what's _that_ supposed to mean, you —" Before she can finish, their surroundings begin to shift again. Melanie clings onto the Admiral and Jon, wondering what kind of hellscape they will be thrown into this time. 

First thing she feels is wind tussling her hair and water dripping on her face. She tentatively holds out her hand; it’s drizzling, must have been for a while, considering the grass she’s sitting on is damp. The Admiral apparently feels safe enough to jump out of their laps.

“We’re out,” she says, a little dumbstruck.

“Yes.” Jon helps her get up. "It takes a moment to make the Dark see the Unseen," he explains.

"Oh." The realization sinks in abruptly. "So you _were_ doing something! Why didn't you say so? I could have helped." She doesn't really know how, but surely, somehow. Even if only by being a little less… _talkative_.

Jon laughs; it's short, but sounds genuine. "You did, Melanie, believe me."

" _Here_ they are!"

Melanie spins around and barely manages to open her mouth before she has her arms full of Georgie, hugging her tightly. She clings back just as fiercely.

"When we got separated from you, I really thought —" Georgie's voice breaks; it’s not necessary to finish that sentence. Martin seems to gradually calm down with each hushed or signed word he gets from Jon. Georgie leans away, but only to frame Melanie's face with her hands. Her fingers are cool. "Are you both okay?"

"Yeah, we're fine," Melanie reassures. "It was the Dark."

"So that's why we couldn't find you," Georgie muses out loud. The Admiral is insistently rubbing against their legs. Nearby, Jon makes a small, worried noise.

"Is that blood on your jackets?" he asks, alarmed.

Melanie pats Georgie's torso a bit frantically as her girlfriend has the audacity to snort. "Kind of?" she states as Martin adds, "It's not ours, don't worry."

"Alright?" After a beat, Melanie continues, "And are you going to elaborate on that?"

Another moment of silence and Martin says, "Not really," at the same time as Georgie echoes, "Nope."

"Un-fucking-believable," Melanie mutters under her breath. She can hear Jon sigh and he must sign something because Martin says, "Yeah, we should be back on the move. There’s still some distance to cover.”

The Admiral meows, pitiful, a sure sign Georgie picked him up and finally placed in his carrying pocket. She takes Melanie’s hand and laces their fingers together. Melanie holds back steadily; it’s going to take something more than puny tricks of fear powers to separate them again.

Still, she can’t let Jon of the hook that easily. When the ground gives way to something firmer, Melanie can easily tell difference between their footsteps and takes a wild guess at things like distance and force, and manages to somewhat successfully shove against his shoulder. It’s not very hard, but she can hear him stumble slightly and make some sort of indignant, exasperated noise that roughly translates to, _what_.

“You _know_ what,” Melanie states resolutely. Jon huffs, but doesn’t say anything. A moment later, though, she can feel him experimentally shove back against her. She _hmms_ , vindicated.

**Author's Note:**

> melanie & jon could have a big "siblings who constantly bicker because they're too alike" energy and i'd love for s5 to give us at least one (1) nice moment of that kind. as for me you can maybe hopefully expect more what the gfs stuff in the future because that would make the society a better place i think
> 
> please talk to me about tma i'm lenaleeiee @ twitter! thanks for reading


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